DANCE
http://www.artsjournal.com/dance
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Keeping City Ballet In Saratoga: Saratoga, New York is struggling to keep the New York City Ballet in summer residence. Ticket sales were up this summer, but not nearly enough. "What are we going to say when we kick them out of our town - 'Come to Saratoga Springs, population 28,000, we used to be the summer home of City Ballet? We are concerned until we have in writing that City Ballet will be welcomed back at SPAC for many years to come. Anything less than a long-term residency here is unacceptable." The New York Times 08/16/04
http://artsjournal.com/dance/redir/20040816-50466.html
A New Place For Choreographers: The first-ever National Choreographers Institute was recently held in Southern California. It featured four choreographers - Peter Pucci, James Sewell, Ann Marie DeAngelo and Lynne Taylor-Corbett... Orange County Register 08/15/04
http://artsjournal.com/dance/redir/20040816-50456.html
Gotta (Commercially) Dance!: "Dancers are used to sell products and entertain visitors in a startling number of ways. There is work performing and choreographing on cruise ships, at theme parks, with live pop music acts, and for television, film and music videos. There's even the more obscure world of "industrials" – conventions and conferences at which dance routines are used to market everything from computers to shoes. This is the world of commercial dance, which is generally distinct from the modern dance and ballet performances in a traditional theater space, known as "concert dance." While plenty of little girls dream of becoming a prima ballerina, many others dream of being a Laker Girl. For a commercial dancer, the emphasis isn't so much on the art of dance – it's on the fun of it all." Orange County Register 08/15/04
http://artsjournal.com/dance/redir/20040816-50455.html
MEDIA
http://www.artsjournal.com/media
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Miramax Downsizes Miramax has cut 13 percent of its employees. "The company said it is laying off 65 staffers because it had too large a staff given that its output has shrunk. This is not a reflection on anyone's performance, it was simply an effort to bring our staff levels in line with a smaller release slate'." Back Stage 08/16/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/media/redir/20040816-50528.html
Study: AM Radio Causes Cancer A new Korean study finds that "regions near AM radio-broadcasting towers had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without. The study also found that cancer deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters. Two years ago an Italian study found death rates from leukemia increased dramatically for residents living within two miles of Vatican Radio's powerful array of transmitters in Rome." Wired 08/16/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/media/redir/20040816-50514.html
Of Critics And Political Opinions What's a movie critic to do when he/she is reviewing a film with a strongly political slant? Should the critic's political bias be prominent in the review? "The question of a critic's bias is especially controversial with feature-film documentaries, which are not bound to reflect both sides of an issue; but even many works of fiction get assessed on the correctness of their worldview as much as on the quality of their aesthetics." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/media/redir/20040816-50461.html
MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/music
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Newport Jazz Turns 50 "The symbolic battle, all those years ago, was to make the world outside its own cabal take jazz seriously. This could more easily happen, it was decided, in a wealthy place that forced a certain kind of attention from social elites and the media. 'We have no particular love for Newport. Yet in one sense of the word we have brought democracy to Newport, which was the last place in the world where it could have been expected to be found in America'." The New York Times 08/17/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50527.html
Cleveland Orchestra In Europe The Cleveland Orchestra departs on a European tour - it's the only American band in Europe this August. "It's a costly tour, but an important one. Despite the orchestra's accumulated deficit of $7.4 million, the tour is unaffected. The trip's $2.3 million tab is being picked up by the European presenters ($1.2 million) and sponsorships, including gifts from Jan and Daniel Lewis and the Frances Elizabeth Wilkinson International Touring Fund. The tour is especially significant for its prevalence of firsts." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50524.html
North Of Music "Iceland may have more musicians per capita than any country in the world. This nation of two hundred and ninety thousand people—roughly the same population as Cincinnati—has ninety music schools, about four hundred choirs, four hundred orchestras and marching bands, and some vast, unknown number of rock bands, jazz combos, and d.j.s. Before Björk ascended to world fame, in the early nineties, it never occurred to many outsiders that such a small country could have such an active music scene." The New Yorker 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50522.html
NJ Symphony To Investigate Instrument Purchase After much controversy, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has decided to "formally review its $17 million purchase of rare violins and other stringed instruments from philanthropist Herbert Axelrod last year, following revelations that some of the instruments are probably not authentic." Newark Star-Ledger 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50521.html
Scottish National Orchestra Gets New Director The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has a new music director - Stéphane Denève, a "complete unknown to British audiences.
Announcing the appointment, the orchestra's chief executive, Simon Crookall, described the relationship between the players and the 32-year-old Frenchman as 'love at first sight'." The Guardian (UK) 08/17/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50516.html
Pipe Dreams - Why Are Concert Hall Organs So Seldom Used? Dallas' Meyerson Hall has a terrific organ. But after some initial concerts after the instrument was first installed, it's had little use. "Organ fans here and beyond are frustrated that it's used so little. Similar stories are cropping up in other cities with glitzy new concert-hall organs; $2 million instruments are becoming expensive décor accessories." Dallas Morning News 08/13/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50480.html
Orchestras Thrive In Colorado The Colorado Symphony and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic both end their seasons with small surpluses. "The success enjoyed in the Springs is particularly impressive, considering that the orchestra started with no assets. It emerged out of the collapse last year, under the weight of a $1 million debt, of the Colorado Springs Symphony." Rocky Mountain News 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50460.html
Does It Help To Know A Composer? Does knowing the composer make for a more authentic performance if you're a performer? The answer is probably not, writes David Patrick Stearns. Association with a composer is no guarantee of anything, and when you see how unreliably composers themselves often have been with their own work... Philadelphia Inquirer 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20040816-50458.html
PEOPLE
http://www.artsjournal.com/people
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Misunderstanding Spike Lee "Now 47 and the father of two, Lee has noticeable traces of gray in his hair, and his eyes look weary behind his glasses. He seems less angry than just hugely frustrated. With the state of his country. With how hard it is for him to get films made, despite being perhaps the most famous black director of all time. With how hard it is for him to find an audience, even within the black community." San Jose Mercury News (CCT) 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/people/redir/20040816-50463.html
Dowling: What's Next After The Guthrie? In 10 years, Joe Dowling has reinvented Minnesota's Guthrie Theatre. Coming off the theatre's most successful season yet, and still two seasons from moving into the theatre's new home, Dowling has begun to think about what's next. St. Paul Pioneer-Press 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/people/redir/20040816-50462.html
PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing
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Khouri Insists Her Book Not A Fraud Norma Khouri is still maintaining her book is not a hoax, even after her publisher pulled the book from stores. "It didn't take them [Random House] long to make up their minds. They gave her until Friday to respond to them and when she didn't respond to them, they pulled the pin on her. They were obviously very anxious to move." Sydney Morning Herald 08/17/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20040816-50520.html
Manly Men's Reading Club Wins Reading Prize A British reading club known as the Racketeers has been named "as recipients of the Penguin/Orange Reading Group Prize, awarded each year to the group who 'demonstrate the most imaginative and diverse reading' in Britain. The only all-male group among 700 entrants, their submission was entitled 'Real Ale, Real Books, Real Men?' and set out their mission: 'The pub atmosphere is an integral part of our ethos. We like the noise, we like the beer, we like the idea of talking about literature in these surroundings. Other drinkers frequently express an interest in our discussions and sometimes get involved'." The Observer (UK) 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20040816-50519.html
A Language All Their Own "The book world has a language all of its own. Reviewese isn't confined to book reviewers; it pervades the literary world. A lot of it comes from book-jacket blurbs, which produce a repertoire of sentences that publishers would like to see in book reviews. This literary lingo consists of words, constructions and formulations few English speakers use, but that sound true if used about books." The Telegraph (UK) 08/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20040816-50515.html
Where's The "There" There? Is "place" important to novels anymore? A group of Canadian literary types sit down to debate the question: "The commodification of place is so prevalent that even non-fiction writers, such as Pico Iyer, have based their careers on it. Read between his clever phrases and glib descriptions of a city in Bolivia or a Toronto street and his point is almost always the same: We're living in a global village now and there's no "there" anymore." The Tyee 08/16/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20040816-50512.html
Omnivore In The Flesh Lawrence Weschler is working on starting a new serious thoughtful non-fiction magazine - Omnivore. In the meantime, he talks about his ideals. "What he longs for is a return to the "non-Pavlovian" reading and writing experiences he enjoyed when he would come across a two-part, 40,000-word piece on surfing, say, and be swept away by the dynamic drive of the narrative, an experience that he could relive around the dinner table the following weekend because his friends would have exulted in the same article. As a writer, he mourns the cherished experiences under the halcyon days, for him anyway, when William Shawn edited The New Yorker." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/16/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20040816-50465.html
Can You Teach Pleasure In Books? "Educators say that from first through third grades, children learn to read; from fourth grade on, they read to learn. Often left out of this discussion is whether a person can be taught to love to read and when or how that happens. In a time when statistics tell us that reading literature for pleasure is on the wane, it seems important to look at our own relationships with books." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20040816-50459.html
THEATRE
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre
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Playing Now - Hadrian's Wall A new play about Hadrian's Wll is being performed... along Hadrian's Wall. "They will step out along 84 miles of the Hadrian's Wall path, a national trail opened last year, while the lucky stage manager will ride the route in comfort with the baggage in the company van. The day after each show in communities along the wall, the six actors plus the playwright will don boots and waterproofs and give another kind of blistering performance, striding 10 miles to the next venue." The Guardian (UK) 08/17/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre/redir/20040816-50518.html
Shoot The (Journalist) Comic. Please! Guardian journalist Paul MacInes figured he'd seen enough bad stand-up comedians do their thing. So he decided to give it a try himself at the Edinburgh Fringe. "As it turns out, few of them are as rubbish as me. Fired into the bearpit of Edinburgh's most notorious stand-up spot, I was to leave clawed, gouged and with a tenderised groin. I wasn't expecting the mauling I got. Indeed, I may never get over it." The Guardian (UK) 08/17/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre/redir/20040816-50517.html
A Coconut Plan Miami's Coconut Grove Theatre hosted the first American production of Waiting for Godot. Now it looks like some major changes may come to the historic building. "In recent years, the operative plan was to renovate the existing building and add a third theater and a parking garage. Then came a newer scheme suggested tearing down all but the façade and building anew. Now there are other options that have enormous implications for history and preservation and the community at large." Miami Herald 08/15/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre/redir/20040815-50451.html
VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts
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Aesthetic And Secure Why do security barriers have to be so ugly? All that brutal concrete... So four architects take a stab at designing barriers that are aesthetically pleasing. “One can create them so that they camouflage the brutality of what we have to deal with daily.” New York Magazine 08/16/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20040816-50529.html
Hawaiian Artifacts Recovered Valuable historic Hawaiian artifacts have shown up for sale in an antiques store. The question is: how did they get there? Honolulu Star-Bulletin 08/12/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20040816-50473.html
Jordan Seizes Iraqi Artifacts Said To Be Bound For France Customs officials in Jordan seized "two boxes of suspected Iraqi relics at Al Karama border crossing last week, following a routine search on a private car. The boxes, hidden in the boot of the vehicle, contained 18 statues, which the driver claimed were to be mailed to an exhibition in France." Jordan Times 08/16/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20040816-50471.html
Policeman Damages Royal Painting A police officer at St. James's Palace has damaged a painting. "The work, by a minor 19th century artist, was worth £1m before the incident. The officer was standing on a chair closing a window when he fell and damaged the painting. A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed the incident but said no action would be taken as it was an accident". BBC 08/16/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20040816-50470.html
